Domestic Violence (Intimate Partner /Family Violence)

Batterers may use many tactics ranging from subtle intimidation to serious injury and even death to control their partners. Below are descriptions of common tactics of abusers.

Emotional and Psychological Abuse

• Manipulating, intimidating, humiliating

• Name-calling, put-downs, threatening, blaming

• Denying the partner’s responses or perceptions

• Exhibiting extreme and controlling behavior, jealousy or possessiveness

• Forcing servitude

• Isolating the partner from friends or family or controlling contact with others

• Ridiculing or insulting the partner’s beliefs

• Threatening harm to self or suicide

• Threatening to expose the partner’s personal information against their will

Financial/Economic Abuse

• Misusing, stealing or extorting the partner’s financial resources

• Destroying the partner’s property or possessions

• Refusing to help the partner when they is sick or in need of medical care, or limiting access to insurance or prescriptions

• Preventing the partner from working

• Preventing the partner from using the telephone

• Taking the partner’s important papers or documents

• Controlling partner’s access to financial assets (Insisting that all assets be in one partner’s name)

Physical Abuse

 

• Shoving, slapping, hitting, pushing, grabbing, punching, backhanding
• Kicking, kneeing
• Choking, biting, hair pulling, twisting arms
• Assaulting with weapons
• Throwing objects, torturing, burning, or holding under water
• Subjection to reckless driving, being forced off the road, forced to drive, pushed out of the car, or run over
• Locking the partner out of the home or abandoning the partner in a dangerous place
• Holding, tying down, standing in doorway or taking keys so partner cannot leave, banging or pinning the partner against a wall
• Standing or sitting on the partner or forcibly carrying the partner
• Denying partner access to sleep
• Attacking or killing pets
• Strangulation

Sexual Abuse

 

• Pressuring, coercing or forcing sexual activity

• Pressuring to get pregnant or to get an abortion

• Attacking sexual parts of the body or hurting partner during sexual acts

• Fondling, forced sodomy or sadistic acts

• Calling the partner sexually degrading names

• Forcing unwanted sexual acts

• Forcing sex using objects or weapons

• Accusing partner of infidelity, treating partner as a sex object

• Pursuing sexual activity when partner is not fully conscious

• Coercing partner to have sex without protection against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases

 

Abuse Through Children

 

• Harming/kidnapping or threatening to harm/kidnap children

• Using children to monitor partner’s activities

• Criticizing parenting skills

• Forcing children to witness or take part in violence

• Threatening to report partner to child protective services or using the courts to continue the abuse

• Abusing the children in order to threaten or emotionally abuse the adult partner

• Using custody disputes to maintain contact through the court system

• Threatening to use information about partner’s sexual orientation or gender identity to affect custody

Stalking

• Going to the survivor’s home or place of employment

• Following

• Repeated unwanted contacts

• Sending unwanted gifts

• Hiring a private investigator or soliciting someone to stalk/follow on their behalf

• Disabling or tapping phones or electricity

• Vandalism

• Using the internet to track communications, activities, or financial information

• Threatening members of the survivor’s support system

Causes of Domestic Violence

The causes of domestic violence are complex, involving both social and personal factors. In many ways, modern society is based on relationships that involve power and control. Domestic violence is learned when children and adults are exposed to it in the family and throughout society. Children who are exposed to domestic violence are more likely to be involved in abusive relationships as an adult, although intervention can significantly decrease this risk. Domestic violence is not caused by anger, stress, mental or other types of illness, genetics, alcohol/drugs, or the actions of the abuser’s partner.